Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. — James Thurber

It used to be expensive to make things public and cheap to make them private. Now it’s expensive to make things private and cheap to make them public. — Clay Shirky, Internet scholar and professor at N.Y.U.

Privacy is not for the passive. — Jeffrey Rosenvia http://articles.philly.com/2012-03-05/news/31124410_1_new-privacy-policy-facebook-search-terms

Jim Farley, Ford Motor Company’s top sales executive, who is known for making off-the-cuff comments, told a panel at the CES: “We know everyone who breaks the law. We know when you’re doing it. We have GPS in your car, so we know what you’re doing.” Although he quickly added, “By the way, we don’t supply that data to anyone,” and later issued a full retraction, the comments, even if overblown and meant to be provocative, fueled the concerns. [NY Times, The Next Data Privacy Battle May Be Waged Inside Your Car, Jaclyn Trop, January 10, 2014]

Privacy snafus are to social networks as violence is to football. The whole point of social networks is to share stuff about people that’s interesting, just as the whole point of football is to upend the guy with the ball. Every so often, someone gets paralyzed, which prompts us to add padding to the helmets or set new rules about tackling. Then we move on. — Nicholas Thompsonvia http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/03/how-to-get-privacy-right.html#ixzz1oS6PqYuI

Recommended additon to the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights: “A right to not have your data rise up and attack you.” — Benjamin Wittes, Brookings Institutionvia http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/03/how-to-get-privacy-right.html#ixzz1oS6PqYuI

The mantra of any good security engineer is: 'Security is a not a product, but a process.' It's more than designing strong cryptography into a system; it's designing the entire system such that all security measures, including cryptography, work together. — Bruce Schneier

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. — Stephen Hawking

In view of all the deadly computer viruses that have been spreading lately, Weekend Update would like to remind you: when you link up to another computer, you're linking up to every computer that that computer has ever linked up to. — Dennis Miller

Securing a computer system has traditionally been a battle of wits: the penetrator tries to find the holes, and the designer tries to close them. — Gosser

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila. — Mitch Ratliff

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved. — Niccolo Machiavelli

"You shouldn't overestimate the I.Q. of crooks." — NYT: Stuart A. Baker, General Counsel for the NSA, explained why crooks and terrorists who are smart enough to use data encryption would be stupid enough to choose the U.S. Government's compromised data encryption standard.

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.
— Mark Twain

These quotations relate to computers, information technology, and security.

This material is largely based on e-mail, newsgroup, or Web postings of presumably public domain material. If you're aware of a correction or if you have a quote that you'd like to see added to this page, please let us know.